


Hope and Other Bad Ideas

by storyinmypocket



Series: So Many Songs to Sing You [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And we will love and cherish her, Eventually there will be a Yen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Being an Idiot, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Mute Jaskier | Dandelion, Mutual Pining, voiceless!Jaskier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23355862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyinmypocket/pseuds/storyinmypocket
Summary: When Jaskier's not looking, Geralt's heart splits open.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: So Many Songs to Sing You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1673926
Comments: 38
Kudos: 318





	1. Silence Like a Knife Wound

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, I'm the person who supplies a good chunk of the Geralt in this series, but since [ruffboi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruffboi/pseuds/ruffboi)'s remixing a lot of the stuff we did, I'm staying out of main continuity for the most part, and will be providing random bits of Geralt.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't lost on him that to leave a bard without a voice might well have been a fate worse than death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pure introspection, because he's already spoken enough in that other fic. He'll talk in further installments, but it's like pulling teeth sometimes, I swear.
> 
> Takes place during and just after Chapter 2 of And Yet, Here We Are.

The silence was becoming maddening.

He'd let himself get lazy when it came to Jaskier, didn't have to follow him by sight or scent when there was the constant flow of conversation, wanted or not, everywhere Jaskier went. The man was seemingly incapable of silence, and he'd become used to it, factored it into his mental map of his surroundings. Where Jaskier was, there was inane chatter, snatches of song, the faint strumming of a lute, _always._

And then there wasn't. Just a bard-shaped figure in his peripheral vision, just the smell of human sweat and perfumed soap and a lingering hint of blood, and his instincts kept screaming at him that this was wrong, this couldn't possibly be Jaskier, because he was much, much too silent, and he touched his lute like it burned his hands.

In the silence, the clop of Roach's hooves turned into a simple refrain: _Your fault, your fault, your fault._

He tried to tell himself it shouldn't matter so much. Humans died. They always died, and that's why he didn't let himself care, why he only trusted the company he paid for, because the whores never got attached.

It wasn't lost on him that to leave a bard without a voice might well have been a fate worse than death.

He tried to talk, stumbling over the things Jaskier said so easily, saying too much, _sharing_ too much, like he'd forgotten everything he ever learned about keeping his feelings to himself. He even tried to sing once, even though he couldn't carry a tune in a bucket on the best of days, just to try and regain some sense of normalcy.

...That ended badly.

All of it ended badly.

He shouldn't care.

He couldn't help _but_ care.

And everything, _everything_ he did was some kind of wrong, it seemed. He started sleeping next to Jaskier after that first night -- the contact seemed to soothe him, if nothing else, but he only allowed himself the one chance to press his lips to the top of Jaskier's head, to hint at more tenderness than he would have shown anyone else in this situation. And Jaskier... gave no sign he'd even noticed.

Maybe he was too close to sleep and never felt it. Maybe he just didn't want Geralt in that way anymore, after years of flirting which Geralt studiously ignored, and one kiss was too little, too late, and a poor trade for his voice. It didn't matter. Geralt was painfully aware of how much Jaskier relied on him now, and he wouldn't take advantage. Less agonizing over kisses, more thinking of ways for them to communicate.

Paper was the obvious solution, but the expensive one. And waiting for Jaskier to pull paper out and write every time he needed something would get frustrating quickly. There were other solutions, but... But then there was Mahakam, where the foundries worked day and night, where the clanging of metal and the ringing of the great bells had cost more than one dwarf or gnome their hearing. The gnomish engineers and dwarven craftsmen kept their secrets close, but their production techniques were less interesting to Geralt than the fact that the deaf workers had developed a system of hand-signs more robust than any he'd heard of. And robust was what Jaskier needed -- there were more rudimentary systems that wouldn't require such a long trip, but none that would allow Jaskier his sudden and surprising bursts of eloquence. None that would let Jaskier speak in a way close to what he was used to.

Mahakam was closed to most travelers, but he'd beg permission if he had to, or camp outside and send messages in for someone to tutor the pair of them. It was a clear next step, at least, and that eased the knot in his chest.

It wasn't until that first hunt when he left Jaskier alone that another stroke of long-overdue luck hit him -- this time, in the belongings of a student killed in a bar fight, going cheap. Things Jaskier could work with.

He wouldn't let himself believe, just yet, that everything would be all right. But he'd take what he could get.


	2. Things Forgotten and Abandoned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hunting monsters was what he was _for._ It made sense in ways the emotional landscape between him and Jaskier didn’t anymore. So he left, the hunt foremost in his mind, confident that if he could just do this one thing, then maybe… Maybe everything would be all right for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place during and just after [Chapter 4](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277634/chapters/56323780) of [the other fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23277634/), and is written assuming you've already read that.

The moment Geralt had learned there was witchers’ work to be had in the next village over, the entire world snapped into a new and more urgent focus. All this time, he’d been dealing with the sick, gnawing feeling in his guts that nothing he could ever do would be enough, that he’d never fix Jaskier’s voice, that he was essentially useless to fix his own mistake… but this, he could do. He could hunt the spirit (sounded like a wraith, hard to be sure, though), he could get them enough coin to keep them going until he found a way to fix the rest.

Hunting monsters was what he was  _ for. _ It made sense in ways the emotional landscape between him and Jaskier didn’t anymore. So he left, the hunt foremost in his mind, confident that if he could just do this one thing, then maybe… Maybe everything would be all right for once.

It wasn’t until he was three-quarters of the way there that he realized something was the farthest thing from all right. He’d been rushing, he hadn’t been paying attention, and… And he hadn’t left food money with Jaskier. He hadn’t even  _ thought _ about it, because he was still operating on the assumptions built with Jaskier’s voice in mind. Jaskier was a bard, after all. He’d sing for his supper like he had hundreds of times before, and everything would be fine.

Jaskier had no voice.  _ Nothing _ was fine. And Geralt hadn’t even thought to stop and talk to him about it.

He let out a barely-voiced  _ fuck _ and urged Roach to a gallop. She couldn’t keep that pace up for long, but they were almost there, and the sooner he got this creature dealt with, the sooner he could be back. Making his apologies, probably. Buying Jaskier the nicest meal he could afford. Maybe wine? Jaskier liked wine. Jaskier liked anything with alcohol in it, to be honest, but maybe Geralt would be forgiven if he brought back a Toussaint Red.

...Because small villages terrorized by monsters always had  _ that _ in stock.

Mahakaman mead, though… that he could manage, given that they were headed right for the source. Jaskier would like that, he thought. The best mead in the world, or so they said, and his personal experience seemed to bear that out. A good meal, the promise of good mead later, and…  _ then _ things might be okay, or at least as okay as they could be, anymore.

When he reached the village, he almost ran the thing over. A wraith, like he’d thought, probably killed on a new moon. Roach shied away, and he rolled out of the saddle before the thing could panic her more. Between the oil coating his blade and a series of Yrden traps, it went down quickly enough, but then there was the question of proof.

...Where there was a wraith, there was a grave, and in that grave, there was a body that had yet to rot. He rode until he found the graveyard, dug until he found the corpse, and that was half the night gone, but he had the head of a murdered man with blood on his lips, still fresh as the day he died, and he could go to the village elder’s house and be paid and get back to Jaskier.

He found the most likely-looking house and knocked. Then he knocked again.

“Fuck off!”

“I’ve killed your wraith!” he called back.

“Fucking lovely, that is. Come back in the morning!”

Geralt growled. The door did not open.

If he was lucky, the village would have an inn where he and his severed head could wait until morning. If he was  _ very _ lucky, there would be something decent to drink, but he wasn’t holding out much hope. 

* * *

After morning came, and he negotiated on price and was inevitably underpaid, and reinterred the head, and saw to Roach, and then rode back, he was finally,  _ finally _ back at the inn where he’d left Jaskier, and he took the stairs to their room two at a time. Even before he’d opened the door all the way, he could smell Jaskier’s anger, a stale and unpleasant mix of fury and despair that coated the inside of his nose, blaming him more effectively than anything else could have… though the papers certainly helped in that regard.

He picked one up, and then another, reading each silently. Some, he noticed, were covered with other writing as well, lyrics and musical notation, and those, he sorted into one hand, only dropping them on the top of the stack when everything else had been read. Jaskier hadn’t been in the room for hours, but his lute was still there, and so were the wax tablets, so either he wasn’t far, or…

( **I know I’m broken,** he’d written, **stop trying to convince me I’m not.** )

...Or he was planning something that would make the need for them irrelevant.

Geralt started running.

* * *

After finding Jaskier, after forgiveness that was offered more freely than he’d dared hope, after dinner and baths, he brought up the papers.

“We could save these,” he said. “The ones you’d already written on.”

Jaskier shook his head.  **Can’t finish them,** he wrote. At Geralt’s frown, he erased the tablet and wrote again.  **I’m not who I was. Rather not look.**

“Hmm,” Geralt said, and Jaskier rolled his eyes and turned away to pack his freshly-cleaned clothing. They’d be leaving in the morning, and the laundry was just barely dry enough to be safely packed.

Geralt wasn’t sentimental. After all, wasn’t it common knowledge witchers were incapable of such a thing? All the same, he held the sheaf of papers and wondered. He’d stopped saying he’d get Jaskier’s voice back, just because of the sad looks Jaskier would throw his way every time he did, but that didn’t mean he’d agreed to stop trying. So maybe… maybe one day, something could be salvaged from those notes.

While he sorted the rest of the papers into a much neater stack to be thrown away, he watched Jaskier out of the corner of his eye. And when his bard turned away, he folded Jaskier’s abandoned songs and tucked them into the bottom of one of his saddlebags. Just in case. If Jaskier recovered and started writing songs again, well… Having the old ones there for him was prudence, not sentiment. Never that.

And in the meantime, if it hurt too much… Jaskier didn’t have to know. And Geralt could always, always throw them out later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to scream at me on tumblr, I'm [@storyinmypocket](https://tumblr.livingthestories.com/) there, too.


End file.
